Into Perpetuity

Into Perpetuity

Mark Coleman

  

  The memories bloat. Expanding until you’re tearing your hair out hoping the roots have grown into your brain so you can tear that out too. The mind torments you with what you wished had died in the past. The ugly moments and the ugly people who inhabited them. Not that they were ugly in appearance but rather disposition.

  You never treated yourself with anything other than hate but went out of your way to treat everyone else with kindness. These people on the other hand had slovenly minds. They still do but luckily most are now out of sight. Unless, of course, you make the mistake of picking up a newspaper. Better to stick to those glossy, shallow magazines with recently diseased celebrities on the cover.

  Walking backwards. The erstwhile path is serpentine. It shakes it’s rattles but still you march onward. Sure, there are loves to be found in that direction but also heartbreak. Days you couldn’t get out of bed. Hours that never passed without a suicidal thought. 

  Broken by a world that you let inside your head. A gulag that there is no escaping from. A borstal that holds you indefinitely. There is no diving out of this gondola of poisonous carrion. Before you is the long nosed mask of the plague. 

  They took all the bridges away. So, you haven’t the chance of following your peers off the Golden Gate. They shackle you to all the wretchedness they can muster. They feed your dogs mustard and laugh as they do so. The cats they nail to the balusters. Caterwauling without cease. Their eyes roll back in their heads where they too are forced to relive the nightmares of their lives.

  The stupid visit this wasteland and come back speaking of glory days. Touchdowns. Home runs. Notches on the bedpost. It’s all they remember. Their ignorance of the ways of the world is boundless. They flex their muscles and spend their every waking hour trying to suck their own cocks.

  The women go there to cry. To have their hymens broken all over again by lost loves. The lake of blood on a far off ex’s sheets. They settle into marriage without love or even compassion. The words become foreign. All they’re left with are champagne brunches with what they call their friends. People they actually despise. Those who remain single will wind up in back alleys with coat hangers up their cunts.

  One of two things happens. Both of which rob you of thought. Either you settle into routine. Jobs you hate. Houses you’d tear down with your bear hands if the termites weren’t saving you the trouble. Or you give way to capriciousness. Have as much meaningless sex as possible. Spend your money on all the shit that you’ve ever seen on a late night infomercial. 

  Sign up for cougar hook up sites when you’re drunk in a hotel on your birthday. Go and sleep with married women and hope you don’t end up a crime of passion. Throw bricks through your neighbors’ windows with messages attached to “GET OUT!” Paint swastikas on all the black churches. Tie the retarded to chairs and proceed to scalp them.

  And still you don’t believe that we are in the middle of a war. Droughts rob whole nations of their population. Children. Women. Men who only strive to provide and make a better life for their brood. The home front is not a field of honor. It is a field of agony and death.

  The cops militarize and swarm down like angry bees. Stinging no longer with blackjacks. Stunning no longer with tasers. But shooting their fellow man in the back. They’ll never die off as quickly as the bees, though. They’ll be acquitted for heinous crimes against humanity. Pardoned. Maybe, even given presidential medals of honor.

  The past slowly seeps into the future. Lynching parties become the norm again. We gather at the scaffold instead of the stadium. Though, of course, there’s popcorn and peanuts still to be had. Refreshment from the squirting neck at the guillotine. The head stuck on a stake as a warning to others. Infraction will not be tolerated. Compliance is a matter of national security.

  Protest all you please. It will change nothing. The fish will boil in the ocean. The Chinese will continuously jump out of windows from the stress of making your shitty electronic devices. The children who make the clothing on your back will, in their exhaustion, accidentally run their hands through sewing machines, and end up as frightening rag dolls. That is after they’re properly stuffed and run through the sewing machine a few more times. 

  Men trying to make ends meet at overly long factory jobs will end up with stumps where their hands used to be. A fourteen hour shift and two hours worth of sleep, and the circular saw does the rest. Our faces will melt and puddle around our shoes. 

  We will scream for mercy where there is none to be found. Set ourselves on fire out of compassion when it no longer exists. Mandated to turn stool pigeon, we will do so without a mouse’s squeak of dissension. Rat on anyone and everyone whether guilty or not. Bring assault rifles to peaceful protests. 

   Push pipelines through ancient indian burial grounds, and be forever haunted by our own ancestors’ ghosts. Apparitions as tall and weightless as skyscrapers will holler out our sins. Transgressions that we will never come back from. Blow off the innocents’ arms with concussion grenades. Tear the flesh off fingers held in v's with the hoarfrost in our hoses. 

  Poison city after cities worth of water until we’re drinking pure radiation and our own contaminated souls. Our hair will fall out. Our nails will peel off. Our four legged friends will vomit blood and so shall we. Until the whole world is swimming in its own sewage and scum. There will be no more drowning just dissolution. An acid bath of cruelty will strip us to the bone.

  You stare at reproductions of the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, and they seem pleasant by comparison. A utopia compared to what we face. The indigenous fall off the globe. Security guards in the schools slam adolescents face first into the filthy, stinking floor. Taken off bleeding and broken to the ICU. Retinas shoot out by harmless rubber bullets.

  This is our very own horror show. The barker with his two headed calf has nothing on this. The mermaid beneath the plate of glass is such an obvious, idiotic scam. The snake charmer charming in every bazaar has lost his charm. The belly dancer is pregnant with twins that kick out their objections in the middle of her routine.
  No one else can claim credit for this mess. We asked and we received in spades. Welcome. The past is present and future. At least, until we finally manage kill off every living creature on the planet.